birds still, become as fearless and familiar as domestic animals. I have
known old and ill-tempered males to become a perfect nuisance on some
estancias, running after and attacking every person, whether on foot or
on horseback, that ventured near them. An old instinct of a whole race
could not be thus readily lost here and there on isolated estates
wherever a proprietor chose to protect his birds for half a dozen years.

I suppose the Talegallus--the best-known brush-turkey--must be looked on
as an exception to all other birds with regard to the point I am
considering; for this abnormal form buries its eggs in the huge mound
made by the male, and troubles herself no more about them. When the
young is fully developed it simply kicks the coffin to pieces in which
its mother interred it, and, burrowing its way up to the sunshine,
enters on the pleasures and pains of an independent existence from
earliest infancy--that is, if a species born into the world in full
possession of all the wisdom of the ancients, can be said ever to know
infancy. At all events, from Mr. Bartlett's observations on the young
hatched in the Zoological Gardens, it appears that they took no notice
of the old birds, but lived quite independently from the moment they
came out of the ground, even flying up into a tree and roosting
separately at night. I am not sure, however, that these observations are
quite conclusive; for it is certain that captivity plays strange pranks
with the instincts of some species, and it is just possible that in a
state of nature the old birds exercise at first some slight parental
supervision, and, like all other species, have a peculiar cry to warn
the young of the dangers to be avoided. If this is not so, then the
young Talegallus must fly or hide with instinctive tear from every
living thing that approaches it. I, at any rate, find it hard to believe
that it has a knowledge, independent of experience, of the different
habits of man and kangaroo, and dis-criminates at first sight between